New Senior Seminar in Inter-Religious Relations

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last modified
Jan 22, 2018 02:42 PM

The very first Senior Seminar in Inter-Religious Relations is "Divine Law and Human Intervention: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the US Constitutional Debate". It will take place on Thursday, 1 February, 11.00 am – 1.00 p.m. in the Lightfoot Room, Faculty of Divinity.

'Divine Law and Human Intervention: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the US Constitutional Debate' (1 February)

This term the Faculty of Divinity is introducing a new Senior Seminar series in Inter-Religious Relations. Our first session will be on 'Divine Law and Human Intervention: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the US Constitutional Debate', and will take place on Thursday, 1 February, 11.00 am – 1.00 p.m. in the Lightfoot Room, Faculty of Divinity.

It will be followed by an informal lunch in the Selwyn Room (Divinity).

All welcome. Please email team@interfaith.cam.ac.uk if you would like to attend the lunch, so we can have an idea of numbers.

This paper will contextualize the current debates in US constitutional law within the broad context of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic legal culture. Exploring the tension between human innovation and an ancient code seen as authoritative suggests striking similarities between these traditions and sheds new light on religious and political particularities of past and present.

The Cambridge Inter-faith Programme is delighted to be establishing a new Faculty Senior Seminar in Inter-Religious Relations. We look forward to welcoming a range of academics from diverse fields, as well as drawing on Cambridge’s strengths in Divinity and other faculties in developing a flourishing programme.

After our opening seminar on 1 February, we will host Professor Asad Ahmed (University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge) on 1 March.

Senior Seminar: An Overview

Since its 2002 founding, the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme has pursued questions of ‘interactive particularity’ among religious traditions, in terms of both academic research and public engagement. This intellectual approach seeks to avoid the assumption of universal or ahistorical essences or impulses present in all cultures and individuals, sometimes marked as ‘comparativist’ approaches. Instead, it draws attention to the formation of the identity-bearing particularities of religious traditions, exploring the internal character, the forms of intentionality and the practices associated with these identities. In this respect, we seek to keep in play both theological and religious studies approaches, in the expectation that this mode of enquiry will yield a deeper understanding of the complexities associated with inter-faith relations, and how and where we might begin to analyse them.

In establishing the Seminar, we encourage a broad and inter-disciplinary interpretation of ‘interactive particularity’. The heuristic value of each of these explorations lies in how studying the profound engagements between religious ideas, embodied lives and texts develops a more nuanced understanding of the traditions themselves. Topics include Jewish, Christian, and Muslim engagement with Platonism, the role of religious texts and traditions of interpretation, the use of particular spaces by separate religious traditions, and contemporary engagements with science, ethics, the law, and forms of secularism. We are also interested in analyses of ‘inter-faith’ and related ideas as objects of study, such as evaluations of conceptual and methodological approaches associated with this field.

Presented by Coexist House and the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme, the first of thee panels on themes of South Asian Interfaith Relations at St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace: 'The Promise of Intimacy: Searching for the Divine in Modern Times'

Coexist House and the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme presents a series of seminars exploring interfaith understandings and relations within South Asian communities at St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace

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